What grid emission factor should a mine or factory in Zambia use?
Zambia's grid is mostly hydro, so its factor is low in normal years. Drought cuts hydro output, as in 2024, and more coal, imports and diesel fill the gap, which raises it. Use the official or IEA figure for the reporting year, and count any diesel gensets separately.
Which figure
- Location based: national average for the year.
- Market based: the utility contract or a renewable contract, if one exists.
- State the year; a drought year differs a lot.
Load shedding
Diesel run during outages is Scope 1 at about 2.68 kg CO2 per litre. It can outweigh the grid in a bad year.
For buyers
Copper is not a CBAM good, but cable and wire makers ask for the footprint of cathode. Power is a large share of it.
What Senseible does here
Senseible reads electricity bills into dated, fingerprinted records and keeps location based and market based figures side by side, each with the factor and year used.
Sources: GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance, IEA, electricity and emissions data, 2006 IPCC Guidelines, Volume 2: Energy
Last reviewed 2026-10-21.